


Almost

by Captainmintyfresh



Series: The punchline [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, Soulmates, Thiam Week, mentions of Scallison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-09
Updated: 2017-10-09
Packaged: 2019-01-11 01:11:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12311688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Captainmintyfresh/pseuds/Captainmintyfresh
Summary: My work for Thaim week day 5 - soulmatesI used the idea of every day you get one sentence your soulmate said that day on your wrist.





	Almost

Soulmates were a cosmic joke. Liam was sure of it. He didn't see the point in having a soulmate if it was so damn hard to find them. Surely, if two people were destined to be together they should be able to find each other easily, they should know the second they meet. It shouldn't be left to this pitiful hell of chance.

Mason told Liam he was a cynic, Liam was inclined to believe him because it was _hard_. Most people's soulmarks didn't start coming through until they were at least sixteen, eighteen usually. But Liam, Liam got his first one when he was six years old, his wrist flaring in pain as dark ink seemed to bleed into his skin to form words.

_She wants me to?_

That's all it said, there was no name, no location, no indication as to who it could be. Liam didn't care at the time, he was six, soulmates weren't something he cared about. But then it carried on, each day the old phrase disappearing and the sentence of the day coming to life on his wrist. Ten years, he spent ten years watching the marks appear, feeling the burn beneath his skin as they did and never once got a real hint as to who it could be. He didn't even have a gender, no name, nothing to explain where his soulmate was from.

Ten years, too many sentences for him to remember but enough that it left his stomach twisting uncomfortably whenever he thought about it. Some days there were words that make Liam's eyes widened and force a wristband over the fresh words so people won't see the words scrawled there.

_Please stop._

_I didn't want this._

_Why do they always scream?_

_It's getting harder to care._

_How come bloods so warm?_

It never sounded good. He wanted to think there was an explanation, one that meant his soulmate wasn't suffering through what was apparently a terrible childhood, a sick, twisted childhood.

There were other days, where nothing appeared. Days were Liam knew his soulmate hadn't talked at all. Because that was what the words on Liam's wrist were, they were sentences that his soulmate had said.

Some people said the phrase was the most important one they said that day. Others said it was just chance, a random phrase picked from your soulmates lips and pasted on your arm until they found a new worthy phrase to replace it. They were never names, never truly telling phrases. You could stay silent for a day apart from a murmur of your address and wait for your soulmate to come because those days, those days nothing would go through the link and your soulmate would be left with a bare wrist and a pit of worry in their stomach as they wondered why their soulmate hadn't said anything that day.

Liam couldn't help but wonder what sort of things his soulmate got on their wrist. He'd stop sometimes, watching the skin as words appeared and try to think of anything notable he said that day. He'd once told Mason he woke himself up by farting, he hoped that wouldn't make its way onto his soulmates wrist.

But that was the thing, he didn't know, he couldn't know. Soulmarks appeared at the same time. Once one phrase got through the link was there, the words would flow between skin for the rest of their lives. So Liam knew one thing about his soulmate, apart from that they may or not be a murderer and that was that they'd have their soulmark.

Hayden didn't. He'd known it the first time he kissed her and yet he'd still find himself praying to recognise a phrase she said that day on his wrist. Hayden's wrist stayed bare when they started dating. Liam's wrist kept picking up phrases. They were different. More normal.

_Maybe I'm just trying to be your friend._

_I just want to help_

He didn't realise he'd started to care about the damn words until he realised he didn't care quite as much anymore. When he felt the burn on his wrist and didn't immediately rip up his sleeve to look at them. He'd kiss Hayden, slow and soft and think it was okay. If whoever's words spread across his wrist each day was really his soulmate then they'd come along eventually. They'd find each other eventually. Out of all of his friends, only Scott had had his words appear and those were faded scars, a scratched out _I love you_ that would be burnt into his skin for the rest of his life. A reminder that whoever it had been who spoke those words was long gone. No one else even had the few clues Liam had at finding their soulmate. He could do what the rest of them did and fall in love with whoever he wanted until they came and proved to him he should be with them instead and if they couldn't, well, he was pretty sure he could be happy with Hayden.

Liam's eyes fluttered to his wrist, the scars deep and still stinging with phantom pain. Liam swallowed the bile in his throat, blinking back the tears. It wasn't the pain of his wrist that hurt but the words that were scarred in, words that made his heart ache and his soul burn with the need to scream until his throat was raw and bleeding. His fingers wrapped around the mark, grip tightening until the creak of bones droned out the pain of the freshly broken connection.

His soulmate was dead. He lifted his hand slowly, as if maybe the small action of covering it had made the words fade, or at least sent them back to the stark black writing he was used to.

_Help me._

Liam swallowed a sob. His soulmate was dead and he'd been too busy saving Mason and fighting the beast and banishing Theo to even realise when it happened. He wondered if maybe they'd be in town the whole time. If they'd been one of the victims of the beast.

He wondered if they knew their words, those pitiful painful words would be stuck on Liam's wrist for the rest of his life.

He wondered if they'd care.

*

He carried on, he hid the scar beneath long sleeves and kissed Hayden until he couldn't breathe because she may not be them, Whoever the hell his soulmate had been, but she was her and that was more than enough.

It burnt, every day, a deep throb of pain that felt like new word appearing, at first he'd scramble, the day after everything happened and he felt the throb he'd almost torn his shirt trying to pull the sleeve up enough to get a good look. It stayed scarred, stayed the same 'help me' that made Liam's stomach turn.

He stopped looking, he stopped paying attention to the throb of pain that would echo through it once a day, he'd pull his sleeve further down, over his hand hiding the temptation.

Liam wanted to hate Hayden when her first sentence appeared, clear black writing that curled in pretty little cursive across her wrist, words that he knew he'd never said, let alone said that day.

_Can I pinch a tampon?_

Instead, he found himself laughing, loud and deep until Hayden was rolling her eyes and grumbling tepid insults under her breath. Hayden had a soulmate, she had a soulmate who wasn't him, who was alive, who she had a chance to be with. Who Liam could tell by the flicker of excitement behind her eyes that she _wanted_ to have a chance with.

He'd kissed her and murmured I love you against her lips. Told her he wanted her to be happy. And she kissed back, with a soft 'I am happy' but they could both taste the unsaid _for now_ on her lips.

He wanted to know the name that belonged to his words, to know what colour their eyes were or what they sounded like when they talked. He wanted to be able to look at his soulmark with the same sad eyes Scott did. He wanted to feel something other than nausea's whenever he caught a glimpse of the scar. To look at it with a sorrowful smile as he pictured their face and their laugh and those things you're meant to learn about your soulmate before the mark turns into a scar.

But he'd never be able to have that, he'd never have a memory with his soulmate, he'd never know where they were from or what they liked, he'd never know what those first words meant. And he didn't want that for Hayden, he wanted her to meet her soulmate. Whoever she was, where ever she was. Even if it meant he and Hayden would be over. He wanted her to know more than the words on her wrist and the bitter taste of almost.

Hayden didn't mention her words, Liam didn't mention his scar and they carried on. They kissed like it was there last chance because they both knew sometime soon it would be. That Hayden would find her soulmate, she was far too stubborn not too and then, then that would be it for them as a couple. Liam's first love would fizzle out and he'd be alone.

Then the wild hunt came and soulmates were the furthest thing from his mind because they were loosing.

He ignored the throb at his wrist as Theo slammed him against the wall of the sewers. Covered in ash and dirt and asking where his sister was.

He ignored the throb as they talked to a ghost rider.

He ignored it when Corey disappeared and when he watched Mason get taken, When he watched Hayden disappear in a puff of green smoke. He ignored it as he fought tooth and nail, literally, to keep the town from vanishing. He ignored it when Theo smiled at him after they run a ghost rider over, when they fought together, when he lifted his hand for a fist bump.

He ignored it when he was lying on the floor of an elevator looking up at Theo in horror as the doors begun to close.

He ignored it until the pain shot through his arm, deep and burning and leaving him clawing at the stupid wristband covering it hate seething through him. His soulmate was dead, it shouldn't still hurt, not now. Now when he'd lost everyone. Corey and Mason and Hayden and in a moment he was even going to lose Theo. It wasn't fair to keep reminding him of it, to remind him that even if he escaped this he'd still end up alone.

He ignored it until he was readying his claws to slice through the stupid scar, to gouge deep within it and rip the flesh away until he tore out whatever made it hurt.

And then he couldn't ignore it, not when his claws were poised to slip through coiling black writing, dark and solid.

_Being the bait._

He ignored it until it was too late. Until the hospital was echoing with gunshots and Theo's heartbeat snapped from existence, until it was pointless for him to call out a warning, until he couldn't breathe past the pain as the words burnt into scars, horribly familiar and completely alien at the same time.

Soulmates were a cosmic joke and Liam's wrist was the punchline.


End file.
